Greetings Jay, let me elaborate more on chimney dampers, why they are used, and weather or not you need them. The Monarch cookstoves were like most cookstoves of that era and had built in chimney dampers, in order to work properly. When you close the chimney damper on a wood cookstove, you are forcing the hot smoke and gases out the top of the firebox over the top of the oven, just under the cook-top, down the side of the oven, under the oven, up the back over the oven and out the stack. Installing an extra chimney damper would not be a good idea.
Another place you would not want to install a chimney damper is with any EPA wood stove. They work best without them as they work buy carefully regulating how much air creates the combustion process. Messing with the draft, messes with this process too, ending up with a stove that wont work as designed.
Chimney dampers are mostly from a bygone time when woodstoves were basically a metal box that you could burn wood in. A huge advancement from an open fireplace, but at that time the word EPA did not exists in the context it does now, nor did the regulations that we have now. Pre EPA there were something like 900 small business producing woodstoves. EPA Phase ! that number dropped to less than 100. EPA Phase 2 dropped that number to less than half of those business able to keep their doors open. That’s another story, for another day.
The invention of the chimney damper was revolutionary in its day as it allowed you to be able to fine tune how much air was coming into the stove by how much draft or vacuum the chimney was placing on the stove. In homes that were 4 stories tall with masonry chimneys centrally located inside the home, could produce quite a draft on the first floor. The more draft the faster the wood would burn.
So the bottom line is unless your burning an barrel stove, an old Fisher or Shrader Woodstove, you will need a chimney damper…..otherwise, no.
If you have a overdraft problem because you have too much draft, better to reduce that draft utilizing a Biometric Damper that automatically
will regulate chimney draft for you.

Hello Jay! Sorry for the delay in the response. No, you do not need a damper on the chimney pipe. 🙂

We are going to hook up our Monarch cook stove and i don’t know if I need a damper or not in the chimney pipe. The stove has been in my family for years and we just moved it to our house. Neither my wife or I can remember a damper in the chimney before so am wondering if it is necessary.

Thanks for you prompt reply!! 🙂